Toto Wolff reveals Kimi Antonelli regret over Monza F1 debut for Mercedes
"But it’s a different ball game if you’re an Italian driver, you’re 18 years old in Monza and it’s your first opportunity..."
Toto Wolff has suggested that in hindsight Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s first outing for Mercedes shouldn’t have been on home soil at Monza.
Antonelli was handed George Russell’s Mercedes for FP1 at the Italian Grand Prix last month.
The 18-year-old will make his full-time debut for Mercedes in 2025, replacing Lewis Hamilton, thus the FP1 session was a chance to see what he could do during an official F1 session.
While Antonelli showed blistering pace initially, he quickly found the barriers within the first part of the session, crashing at Parabolica.
Speaking to Autosport, Wolff reflected on Antonelli’s first outing.
“I wouldn’t say it was a mistake, but I think we weren’t completely right in assessing the pressures that he could find himself under,” Wolff said. “Why that is, is that we talked about it, and how to approach the session.
“He has been brilliant in testing. He has never put a single foot wrong in the many thousands of kilometres that he’s done.
“But it’s a different ball game if you’re an Italian driver, you’re 18 years old in Monza and it’s your first opportunity.
“Maybe if we had considered that as a risk factor against the set of data we had from him, probably it would have been wise to give him an FP1 that would have been in a totally different time zone than Italy. But he will learn a lot from that.”
It was revealed afterwards that Antonelli showed “outstanding speed” ahead of his shunt.
Despite the crash, Wolff backed Antonelli’s approach.
“I thought it’s not good for him, because I thought it’s a shame for him,” Wolff added.
“He was so quick, and that was his first session in Italy, about to be announced as a driver, which everybody pre-empted.
“I like his approach. He’s fast on the first lap out of the pits, and that is what he’s demonstrated. Obviously, I would have enjoyed him being on the leaderboard high up and that was taken away because the car flew - and some of those speeds were only achieved much later during the weekend.
“Obviously he was too fast for the condition of the track and for the car at that stage, so it was balancing the ambition, the motivation and the skill versus also the experience that FP1 is FP1.
“I knew that that was going to hurt him, that was going to hurt him emotionally.”
With a sharp eye for F1’s controversies and storylines, Connor is the heartbeat of our unbiased reporting.
